While health is often associated with what happens in the doctor’s office, the environment we live in plays a significant role in shaping our well-being and longevity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), environmental factors contribute to 24% of global deaths annually. And, according to healthcare company GoInvo, up to 89% of health occurs outside of the clinical space. Despite this huge impact, public health considerations are often left out of urban planning conversations.
The team at Healthy Cities aims to bridge this gap with the Healthy Cities Generator (HCG) — a forward-thinking tool designed to transform urban planning through health-based insights. In development since 2017 and fueled by real-world data from health and urbanism literature, the HCG enables cities to assess how their urban plans impact physical, mental, and environmental health.
Adding value to the Healthy Cities Generator
To build on the success of the Healthy Cities Generator, an economic impact analysis step has been developed, adding a critical financial perspective to the tool. Supported by EIT Urban Mobility’s Targeted Open Call, the HCG€ Value project has enabled the development of the additional step, offering the quantification of the economic benefits of life expectancy improvements linked to healthier urban designs. The new HCG tool offers a streamlined, easy-to-use interface that was developed through extensive research and user consultation.
HCG empowers cities to advocate for health-forward planning by showcasing the tangible financial value of positive health outcomes. By translating the often-intangible health impacts into quantifiable metrics, the tool helps city leaders make informed decisions, balance budgets with a long-term perspective, and importantly – secure stakeholder support. As the tool projects impact on both health outcomes and their economic value, urban planners and policymakers can utilise its outputs to justify their health-driven decisions; showing the return on investment that inevitably comes from healthier urban populations.
Amber De La Haye, Expert in Urban Health, Gender & Equality for Healthy Cities explains, “There is no other tool out there that offers these economic results. Elements of the urban environment that improve health often are not the most profitable…if you are a developer putting in a development you can sell real estate and you can rent out lots, but a park offers you no income. So, it can be harder to argue for these elements of the urban environment that are essential for people’s health – and putting it into economic terms really helps make that argument. Urban planners and technicians want this tool so they can take it to decision-makers to say ‘it looks like it is going to cost us a bit of money to put in this park or this bike lane…but you are actually going to be making back that return on investment in a few years in terms of how much money we are going to save as a society in health costs’.”
HCG in Bradford, United Kingdom
The HCG tool was piloted in Bradford, United Kingdom — a city grappling with significant health inequalities and challenges, including poor birth outcomes, sedentary lifestyles, low emotional well-being, and high stress levels. Notably, life expectancy in the city centre is approximately 10 years shorter than in the surrounding countryside, with the striking observation that each bus stop closer to the centre represents an average loss of one year of longevity.
To address these stark disparities, the city centre of Bradford is undergoing redevelopment, aiming to improve the health outcomes of its 100,000 residents. Two key initiatives — pedestrianisation and urban greening — were assessed using the HCG tool to evaluate their potential impact. The tool revealed significant environmental health benefits, translating into €700 in annual savings per person. This analysis projected that the investment would pay for itself within just two years. Additionally, the HCG tool was able to identify which actions would have the greater health impacts, concluding that urban greening would yield greater health benefits than pedestrianisation. This finding surprised Bradford’s planners and showcased HCGs value in providing data for improved decision-making.
HCG in Cascais, Portugal
The HCG tool was also tested in Cascais, Portugal, a small municipality near Lisbon with a population of 20,000 people and a large elderly population. The project is in the early stages of planning and aims to improve pedestrianisation, reduce traffic and create an urban green space. The tool found that the plan was well-targeted to reduce traffic as well as increase social interaction and suggested that this project would result in savings of €400 per person, per year – resulting in a return on investment in 26 months. De La Haye explains, “Using the HCG tool in this case is very useful because the project is at the planning stage, and this will help them justify to the decision-makers in the municipality that it should be done and that it needs funding. To be able to say that you will have these economic outcomes is very positive.”
The future of HCG
The new tool also enables cities to share their experiences with the tool, allowing others in the ‘Healthy Cities Movement’ network to learn from successful case studies. The unique tool addressing the challenge of balancing profitable urban development with investments in public health, was the result of numerous collaborations. Supported by EIT Urban Mobility and the University of Lisbon, De La Haye explains, “We would not have been able to create the economic step without EIT Urban Mobility’s support. While we handle a lot of the work ourselves, working with the University of Lisbon and their researchers on this tool development was a great experience. We are really happy to have been able to collaborate in this way.”
With the newly improved Health Cities Generator available for use, the aim is to deploy the tool across more than 90 cities by 2028, empowering municipalities across Europe with data-backed policies to foster healthier, more liveable urban spaces.
